


we were together (I forget the rest)

by sugimotos



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fix-It, Getting Together, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Temporary Character Death, it's pining hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 13:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20797202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugimotos/pseuds/sugimotos
Summary: I burned so long so quiet you must have wonderedif I loved you back. I did, I did, I do.Eddie yearned just as much.





	we were together (I forget the rest)

**Author's Note:**

> The first three paragraphs were inspired by a beautiful post/headcanon by @antifamorgana on tumblr. The rest of the fic is just me trying to deal with overwhelming love for Reddie and a big f*ck you to Stephen King, who committed Killed Eddie At The End crimes. 
> 
> title from Walt Whitman and the summary quote from Annelyse Gelman.

_Richie _is the first thing he thinks, like a word ripped from a book, like a familiar sound in a foreign language. Which is weird, because he doesn’t know the man cracking joke after joke on the huge tv screen Myra got them for Christmas. It’s just a comedian wearing ugly glasses that don’t fully hide the mad, beautiful gleam of his eyes, some famous stand-up dude whose name Eddie didn’t catch.

And yet something unyielding (undying) hooks around the soft part within his chest and _pulls. _It’s the hue of remembrance, only. The memory of a memory, like the faint smell of a friend’s borrowed shirt. The smell of his room, his words in the dark, the weight of his hand when it fell on Eddie’s shoulder. Leaving a trace of warmth as if the sun had lingered there the most. The shock of his body hitting the water next to his own. Laughter – and endless annoyance. Something deeper, something breathless. That brief euphoria before shame hit.

Eddie turns off the tv, glad that Myra isn’t home. The tears would be hard to explain – he doesn’t understand them himself. He holds the inhaler close but doesn’t use it. Beneath the memories that fade even as if he tries grasping them as he tries grasping for air, there’s the truth that he carries around every day like he used to with his fanny pack. But he won’t look. He won’t look. He’s lived thirty-five years closing his eyes. The light would blind him if he opened them now.

Richie, is the first name he pulls from the cellar of his past, from the fog Derry – or the thing that lives in its bowels - left in his mind, five years later, when Mike Hanlon calls him. It doesn’t dwindle like before, it grows stronger like a heartbeat. He remembers broken glasses and a broken arm. It hurts now, like the scar on his palm. What broke it? What was he doing? _Playing with your nasty friends, _his mother had told him. He remembers the shape, the scream of the boy that snapped the bone back into place. The pain is like a taste in his mouth, and so is the terror.

But the terror isn’t only for the thing (the thing, nameless, formless, just the sensation of fear). Because there was _joy _there, joy at the centre of madness, joy when he thought of that boy. He’s making six figures now, he’s married, he’s respected, he’s competent. And nothing in his life feels like that.

“Richie,” he murmurs at the Jade when he first sees him. And contains what falls into his expression when the asshole starts joking, their eyes locked like the joke is a homecoming gift for Eddie alone. Richie’s hands hidden in his pockets, a speck of bashfulness is the only sign that it’s been almost thirty years. That and their ages of course. And the missing files in their minds. But the foundations are there.

They fall smoothly into that old routine. And while Eddie missed all the others there’s a high he reaches only when Richie teases him. Oh, he’s his favourite victim. It’s tempting to imagine: When they were kids, this was their courting.

Wishful thinking.

But he lets himself enjoy it: _fuck you bro! _They yell at each other.

For forty minutes, one hour and a half perhaps, only the good comes back. The five strangers and Mike and the recalling of that summer. It feels, for a moment or two, like finding family. Something he had a name for all those years ago.

But Pennywise comes back as well. It’s a flash: a painted red smile, yellow, hungry eyes. Its skin the whitest of whites. And the teeth…

That camaraderie dims and fear replaces it fast, like it did when they went to the house in Neilbolt street and Eddie broke his arm.

And then there’s Stan and Eddie’s lungs shrink within him.

“Richie, remember that?” They’re at the clubhouse and he feels a distant sadness that grows closer the more he remembers Stan. It’s so strange to mourn someone you’ve forgotten. He wants to be distracted from that feeling so he pulls Richie to a place between two columns. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking for until he finds it, crouching on the floor and gathering the rags of what was once a hammock.

He looks at Richie and his face lights up with recognition. Briefly, there’s something like longing. But he snuffs it out with a joke:

“I remember your smelly foot on my face and seeing your panties, yeah.”

“I remember there was a fucking ten minute rule and you disrespecting it every fucking time.”

“Damn, Eds. I remember they called _me _trashmouth but your mouth is _dirty _man, you need to wash it with soap.”

Richie is smiling. It feels like bickering. An underlying sweetness to it. As if – it feels so – they could do this every day, and never tire.

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie says, the distaste for the nickname another thing that just came back “I just remembered. I _hated_ when you called me Eds.”

“And I just remembered, I _loved _to mess with you, Eds. It’s all coming back now—”

“God, I think I wanted to smack you half of the time.”

Richie is fast, as he always has been:

“What about the other half?”

And Eddie’s mouth is dry of words because this is the forbidden ground. Richie’s hands are stuffed in his pockets again and he looks at him almost in expectation. _I wanted to kiss you; _Eddie wants to say, _not half, but all of the time. _

But all which is painfully sweet and sweetly painful that comes with falling in love at thirteen is followed by other memories. They had names for boys like Eddie in 1989 Derry. Henry Bowers and his gang used to shout a variety of them at him regularly. But the true definition was whispered only. A grown-up word. Hid away like the name of a sickness.

Eddie swallows, asks instead:

“How much do you remember?”

Richie crouches besides him and gently takes the rag from his hands, examining it, as if braille made the fabric, as if he could read it with his fingers. Covered in dust and spider webs and hard from the earth. Eddie looks at him, at that pale face, at the line of a vein in Richie’s neck. He’s never seen Richie hesitate before but there it is.

“Not everything. There are whole chunks still missing but,” he looks at Eddie now “but it was nice. We were good, the seven of us. But you and me specially.”

In that quiet there could be no monsters. In that moment of simple hope – and Eddie remembers hoping before, when they were together in his boyhood, hoping every time Richie lingered in his touch and in his words and in his eyes. He puts his own hand on the rag (the thought of germs so far now, but he’s always been his bravest when they were together) and can see the hammock in all its colours back then. The places where their skins touched when they shared it.

“Richie,” he begins, “I—”

But Mike’s calling them now and they both turn. His lungs fail him again, and he’s glad because that one moment of bravery could ruin so much. And he should been content with the little he’s got.

He screams next: “RICHIE!” taking that face in hands still rough from holding firmly to the weapon that kills monsters. He’s just killed one, he thinks. But Richie’s eyes are white as pearl and he’s not answering. But he’s here now and he’s brave, brave like the little boy who, covered in tar from the mouth of nightmares, screamed at the clown: _I’m gonna fucking kill you!_

Stories like theirs can’t end like this.

He remembers Ben doing what all fairy tales had taught him to do and kissing Beverly back to them. It worked, with the same magic that had brought them all together, seven losers powerful enough to challenge a god, that same magic that made that spike sharp enough to pierce through Pennywise’s flesh. Why wouldn’t it work for them?

It must have been scarier than facing the clown for Ben because it is for him. _One moment of bravery could ruin so much. _He looks at Richie, at his unseeing eyes, at his dirty cheeks, at the blood dripping slowly from his nose. And then presses his lips to his. He presses into the kiss, too, his belief that this which he carried so quiet and so long inside could be stronger than the deadlights.

Richie gasps, his eyes focused again. He blinks and looks at Eddie, trying to regain his breath. And Eddie smiles, still holding his face between his hands. Distantly he can hear Pennywise agonising.

Richie is still looking at him and for once he’s speechless.

“Richie, hey, I think I’ve got it man,” Eddie says excitedly, too excited, in fact, to realise that the sounds Pennywise was making have suddenly ceased. He can’t stop babbling because the kiss was enough bravery for one day and what it meant can be discussed after they leave this place. “I think I killed It, I…”

He sees the shock in Richie’s face before he feels the pain itself. The blood wells up in his throat, spills out of his mouth. He doesn’t look down yet, he keeps looking at Richie. Waiting for time to turn around, a pain so huge right under his lungs that he can’t breathe without hurting. If he doesn’t see it, a feverish part of his brain argues, it won’t be real.

Pennywise laughs that high-pitched laugh of his and pulls him from Richie. Eddie screams.

After he’s hit the ground, after seeing the tear-tracks on Beverly’s grimy cheeks, after feeling the other losers’ hands on his shoulders, touching him so gently as if a little harshness could finish him off, after hearing the desperation in Richie’s voice, after—

He’s dying, but it’s ok. It’s strangely calming once he’s accepted it. It’s finally then that all memories come back in full force and colour. He’s loved them all so much, and he’s glad he’s got to love them again before the end. And at the centre of his goodbye there’s the boy in glasses too big for his face, the foul-mouthed brat that sought him first everytime they faced the monster. Tugging him to his body as if he was that much bigger, as if those gaunt limbs could shield him from anything. There’s his only regret. 

Richie’s trying to keep him awake. His voice is gentle but there’s an urgent edge to it.

“…buddy you gotta stay awake ok? We’re getting you out of here, I promise. Stay with me. Eds, please…”

“I hate when you call me that,” Eddie interrupts him softly, and there’s only affection in his voice. Bev is sobbing somewhere at his left. The words are hard to drag out when there’s so much blood in his mouth. “Richie, I…I…”

But the truth is drowned in him as his breathing stops. It doesn’t hurt, not even the hole in his chest. Gentle like turning off a light before going to bed. Only darkness now and Richie’s face as a last, and favourite memory.

His hands grasping at Eddie’s shoulders, _gently, he’s delicate _his mother’s voice comes to him in a moment of hysteria, and Richie is laughing but he’s crying too like some part of his body has already accepted it, but his hands keep grasping and shaking, you won’t go will you? not now, please, not now when we can live whole—

“Richie…honey…he’s gone.” Bev tells him softly, a cry of her own in her voice.

The remaining losers are surrounding him and Eddie. Eddie’s unmoving eyes, his unmoving mouth. On Richie’s lips his last living kiss. Richie bends his head, feels the beginning of understanding, the increasing, unmerciful acceptance. And something else, something buried that tells him that, if he lets it fester, if he lets it grow, then Eddie’s truly lost. An ancient voice, greater than he is, greater even than the god-killers they are.

“We need to g-g-g-o soon,” Big Bill says, urging him, “this place is c-c-collapsing…” but he doesn’t move either, his hand on Richie’s back. He was the first to really believe back when they were kids, not only on the monster itself but on their power to destroy it.

That belief is still there and so is the magic it creates. They didn’t run out of it. Eddie kissed him back to sanity. Brought him forth from the void. He remembers: the echoing sound of his voice (_Beep-beep motherfucker)_, distant, a sun-journey’s worth of miles. But still it reached him in that nightless place, from his love’s frail lungs. And the kiss, after, that most fundamental and final rule in the elegant set of a fairy tale. There is a happy end to be had: They deserve it just as much as princes and their princesses do.

“No,” Richie says, his voice firm and clear. He turns to them: “we can save him. I know it sounds crazy but come on, we just bullied an alien clown to death. Please,” _help me. Help him. _“Please,” his eyes meet Mike’s and he sees something kindle in them. Dearest Mike, the guardian who stayed.

“The ritual of Chud,” Mike gasps, with the same feverish excitement from when he met them for the first time in almost thirty years “We have to believe. If we do—”

“We can bring him back.” Bev completes the sentence. She has that same fierceness from before and Richie is reminded that she was the one who first drew blood from the clown. Softly she puts one hand on Eddie’s shoulder, the other on Richie’s back.

Ben’s next, with that reassuring gravity in his expression, his hands following Bev’s. He looks at Richie and maybe he knew back then, maybe unconsciously, because he’s intimate with longing. He tells Richie: “Let’s do this.”

Mike and Bill come next. Big Bill doesn’t stutter when he says: “We’re gonna bring him back, Richie.”

There are four hands on his back, four centres of warmth. They are all touching Eddie too, a circle encompassing the two of them. Richie holds Eddie’s face with one of his hands, while the other grasps at Eddie’s hand. Debris is falling steadily now but – not strangely, not strangely at all – it seems to hit anywhere but them. He’s never been religious, and he wouldn’t call this by any divine name. But this has a holiness of its own. Perhaps it’s imagined, perhaps not – but he hears Stan’s voice whisper to him: _you can do it, trashmouth. _

“Come back,” Richie begins and the others follow. Their voices soft now, unlike before, when they burned the tokens. The chanting grows stronger, surer, but not into shouting. “Come back, Eddie. Come back, come back, come back…”

“Come back to me,” Richie whispers, his lips almost touching Eddie’s. Under his wet clothes his skin seems to warm from the touch of their hands. “Come on Eds, please…”

As if on cue – he always did hate when Richie called him that – Eddie draws a breath. His fingers tighten faintly at Richie’s hand.

“Richie,” Eddie groans, twenty-four hours later, at Derry Home Hospital. Consciousness is slippery, his body feels heavy and comfortable, just the echo of a pain in his core. Warmth spreads in him from where Richie’s body touches his.

“Eddie,” Richie gasps, fixing his glasses against his nose and holding Eddie’s hand so hard it almost hurts. His hair dishevelled because he hasn’t left Eddie’s side but for a quick shower and a change of clothes, and only because the nurses wouldn’t let him stay in the room covered in that filth from the sewers.

“What happened? I was impaled by that clown…I thought I was dead.”

“We couldn’t let you die,” Richie says, his voice already breaking as tears gather in his eyes “that would have been so sad, man. Dying a virgin in a sewer, can you imagine…”

“Shut up.” Eddie says weakly, needlessly. Richie is already sobbing against his shoulder, all words lost, the weight of him warm and good over his body. He falls asleep again like this, caressing very softly Richie’s dark hair.

The other losers come one by one and sometimes all at once throughout the rest of the week. Richie is a constant, but he’s hugged and spoiled and teased and loved by Mike, Bill, Ben and Beverly too. Now that the shadow’s gone, and although he’s in a hospital bed for most of the time, there’s a sense of restlessness, of change. He sees it in the frequent calls Bill makes to his wife in California and to his lawyer, in the way that Mike watches him with barely-concealed anxiousness. Bev does the same, her voice hushed but firm, Ben’s arm around her shoulders the entire time. There’s green ground beneath the dead leaves. When he’s finally feeling well enough (his recovery is nothing short of miraculous, a doctor tells them six days after they defeated Pennywise), he takes his own cellphone and calls Myra.

Richie is unusually quiet, sitting on the chair next to him. His body under the summer-light, the dark of his hair softened to a gilded brown. The glasses still unfixed, his hand holding Eddie’s. He wants desperately to make a joke, to pretend his heart was shallowed by life, but it hasn’t and he knows it and Eddie knows it too. But it’s a burden to touch something yearned for. And what honesty could he hide after his very heart saved Eddie from death? He’s lain bare. He wants to ask: _what now? _But they already know. Eddie will get out of the hospital tomorrow, and Richie will drive him to the Kissing Bridge. Part of him wants to chop down the wood and damage public property to take home with them the piece that still harbour their initials, carved twenty-seven years ago. Part of him wants to leave it there, as a token to this town. There they were, and if anything good came out of Derry it was their meeting. Then all of them, all six losers will leave this place for good. They’ll remember each other this time, and meet constantly, every holiday they can, every thanksgiving and Christmas and Stanley’s birthdays. Eddie and he will move in together. They’ll share meals and t-shirts and kisses and a hammock. They’ll bicker – and fight, sometimes – and laugh. And they’ll live, and live, and live.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
